I just finished my very first project! It's a seven inch basketweave square that I'll sew fabric onto to make a potholder. I did it all in one afternoon/evening once I figured out how to fix mistakes. Anyway, the whole time I was working I was thinking about counting rows. In the video of double (long-tail) cast on, she says that this way you have a knit row already. Well, my pattern had a knit row for row one. Does this mean that by casting on with this method I've already done the first row? Same goes for binding off -- the last row in the pattern was all knit, then it says to cast off. I used the basic knit binding from this website. I also knit both the first and last rows, but am wondering if I could have saved myself some time.
(I thought I was really zooming along until I got to the cast off -- then I felt all thumbs again -- definitely not my favorite part of knitting...)

Personally, I'm of the opinion that it doesn't really matter one way or the other. Some people count it as a row, some people don't. Over the course of a whole project, one row isn't going to make any noticeable difference. I always count the cast on and that and no more. I always start my actual instructions with row 1.